A PhD investigation on comm. design contribution on Malaysian Identity by Nurul Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
Based on a work at www.nurulrahman.com.

I haven’t been writing much in this blog lately, not that I don’t have anything to write but I been busy writing somewhere else. I have some thought now and then, I wish I could go online and see how it goes but sadly it’s just not as easy as sketching. Well, I should start by wishing you my friend who regularly spend time reading my 5 cents ideas and thought about design checking what’s new in my blog. To you I wish Happy New Year and hope this year will give us more guts in provoking design studies, practices and theory around.

I’ve been travelling around for a short break, and presenting paper in a conference. Now I have arrived and settle where I came from in Melbourne as I have a lot more to finish, the unfinished research. While I’m travelling, in the country I spend most is France, not all region but some places, enough to realise some interesting fact about French or I could say in this case it is not only on France but many other country. Language is very intriguing. Not all countries speak English although it was claimed as the most important language in the world. Indeed, is one of the languages that will allow us to communicate to other, after all almost everybody at least knows one words in English, thanks to film and music industry.
While laying in front of the television after lunch in Reims, I turn on the remote to see what’s on.  Yes, I know most of the people know this but for me it’s shocking. Why everything is in French? We could view this from different angle. I ‘m looking at it from identity issues, mainly national identity. Clearly language is another medium to connect and to be able to communicate to each other. Apart from the language also represent or identify almost which country the person comes from. Lying in front of the tele I was wondering, could it be possible with the standardized the language French thinks other people around the world speak French? Every France citizen or permanent residency speaks French. How does the authority get to this? Definitely tv program and promotional advertisements is one of the way to construct this idea. When nothing else is use except one language, one don’t have much choice then start learning or else would be left all alone. This idea has strong relation to choice and freedom.

In country like Malaysia, if the freedom of choice is so far away and there’s not much choice left, nothing much one can do apart from taking the risk rather then taking the risk to be left alone. Don’t get me wrong nothing going towards issues such as politics, blog can become a sensitive issues in Malaysia, therefore I have to say it out loud, nothing political in here. Now because of this limited choice to be able to choose Malaysian have lack of design understanding. What is design and what does it mean to most Malaysian designers?  I was supposed to give a talk in KL on kakireka small talk in KL organised by Wrega (Malaysian Non Profit Graphic Design Association), but then something came out and we have to call it off. But the topic I have in mind came after my visit in Penang in December last year and I’m writing a chapter about it to publish in a design journal.

The issue that I’ve found quite interesting is about the vernacular of Malaysian design. Is there any? One could argue and said that there are, depending on what it the word design means to oneself. Some would say no because nothing reach the standard. What standard? Again this also will goes to what they mean with the word design.
If we look at the Oxford Concise dictionary (11 ed. 2004 since 1911), the word design means:
a)    A plan or drawing produced to show the look and function of something before it is built or made.
b)    The art or action of conceiving of and producing of something
c)    The arrangement of the features of artefacts.
d)    The propose or planning that exists behind an action or object.

Now what that mean here if we look at most of the artefact that are available in Malaysia from massive advertisement to the one that are photocopy, from the logo of the big shopping mall to the logo of the small hawker shop, regardless what is the visual looks like, the aesthetic part of it, these artefacts does fit in under the action of designing. So back to the question is there any design in Malaysia, the answer is yes, definitely. But whether it can be claim as Malaysian design, we will find out later on. Is there any vernacular Malaysian Design?

A PhD investigation on comm. design contribution on Malaysian Identity by Nurul Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
Based on a work at www.nurulrahman.com.

Got my poster accepted for an online exhibitions – Newviews Design Conference
Here’s the link. There’s also an exhibition running in Melbourne Museums, have a look at the Newviews websites for more information. Graphic Design Posters and graphic design discourse is part of the program on the opening days – 15 November 2008. Prof. Teal Triggs from London College of Arts will present a talk about Scissors and Glue in the postgraduate public talk.

I found this text in the book called Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture by Arthur Asa Berger (2007). It’s a really useful book about advertising and in one chapter the author takes the reader step by step to analyzing advertisements (printed and television).

Have a read at this text and let me know what you think about it because I’m surprise the way the author describe the visuals (I think it is visuals artifacts).

“The things we have to realize about radio and television commercial and print advertisements (and all other forms of advertising as well) is that they are, aside from their commercial functions, works of popular art. Or maybe ‘commercial’ art is a more fitting term. In this chapter and the next I will focus upon print advertisements and television commercials, the two most interesting – from my point of view – kinds of a texts. I will use the term ‘text’ here for both; it is a term conventionally used in criticism nowadays to cover all form of artworks.” Berger, Asa Arthur (2007:137).

The words “text” conventionally used in criticism nowadays to cover all form of artworks? How about visual? Is this mean that the word ‘visual’ is not recognized as a language, therefore the word ‘text’ is use to describe it? May be I’m a bit unaware and not familiar with some of academic’s language but I can’t understand why the word ‘Text’ instead of ‘Visual’?

Most of Graphic Designers work with/through visual as a communication medium and not just through text. Does this mean the practice of graphic designer is not recognized instead the copy writer or the author is recognized because of the ‘text’? I’m not saying that text is not use in graphic design practices, because it does. It’s just that we used the word ‘text’ for literally the meaning of text and the word ‘visual’ for anything that have the form of images such as illustration, photograph, painting etc. Visual is another form of language and it is as powerful as text (Barthes, Lupton). Speech is another way of language that sometime can be rhetoric. I was surprise because the author takes the reader step by step analyzing the advertisements, looking at the visuals such as photograph, images, illustration, etc. and call it “text”. Is this because lack of written text, research or information about visual artefacts or graphic design artefacts? Roger and out to you!

Communication Designer… you might want to check it out.. sadly I’m far away.

Designyatra

I found this ads in you tube while browsing around looking for Malaysian Ads. This is an ads from Malaysian Tourism for Promotions of Visit Malaysia 50 years of Independence.

The song that is sang in this ads is called ‘Rasa Sayang Eh! ‘ which means ‘Feeling of loves’. However the meaning is more that the feeling of love, this song has a strong connection with construction of Malaysian National Identity. This song has been taught from kindergarten to University since Malaysian Independence.

It is a popular Malaysian song that most of the Malaysian knows how to sing it. It is very easy, just the ‘Pantun’ part is a bit hard because it needs a knowledge of creating ‘Pantun’ like making rhymes, that can be anything. ‘Pantun’ is an old idioms that is use for teasing people in the olden days. Nowadays ‘Pantun’ is used in mainly Malay festive and wedding, as an introduction before the function starts.
Here are the original lyrics of this song.

Rasa Sayang Eh!
Rasa Sayang Sayang Eh!
Hey! Lihat Nona Jauh,
Rasa Sayang, Sayang Eh!

In between of this paragraph is ‘Pantun’ which is a Malay quatrains with a stanza of four lines.

Now back to the ads. In this ads, 4 main ethnic in Malaysia are used to sing the ‘Rasa Sayang’ song. Together with it, different cultural practices is projected to distinguish the cultural differences in Malaysia such as food, national dresses, nature, modernity, cultural behavior etc.. At the same time, the images of Malaysian living in harmony with happy faces is shown. The part that each ethics is singing the same song but in their own language, with the similar meaning shows that Malaysia is united with multi-ethnics. Notice that the song begins with ‘Bahasa Melayu’ Malay language, then English, followed by Chinese, Indigenous and Indian. It is follow by the percentage of the ethnics in Malaysia. The Malays is the dominant ethnic in Malaysia. Hmmm! Interesting… but why? Is it deliberately or just a coincidently?

Only recently in Malaysian ads images of indigenous people started to appear, event better their language is now been used as one of the strategies to promote Malaysia. This kind of ads is fairly new, projecting the Indigenous where else in 70′s and 80′s it is hardly seen in any Malaysian ads. Why and how does this happen in Malaysia where this images was dissolve in our past life? Why now?

I had a chat with Neal today, which is as always ending up with leaving me hanging with some thoughts.

We spoke about several things mostly about the roles of graphic design in the societies. We discussed about their contributions and practices.

Neal has been practising graphic design around 20 years in Australia. Then he decided to teach graphic design in college and university as well as practising it. From our discussion, Neal mentioned that the roles of graphic designer have definitely evolved through these years reflecting back at his own experiences. The roles of graphic designers is no longer to make things looks good or touching up to make things looks better, but it has grown more up to the extend it is now been apply and used as research methods.

There are some arguments and doubts about the transparency in the practice of designing in graphic design. Until now, it is vague as there are no definite ways to produce a graphic design artefacts, for examples is there a clear methods on how to design a service or even how to make a poster and a clear rational behind it.

Universities and academics urge for more publications on methods of practice in graphic design. It is the one of the way to inform or educate others on rational behind the process of designing. The moment when graphic designer decided to choose certain font, images, background or even the material of the object can be invisible and some might view it as ‘magical’. That is when the ‘talent’ came in, only the selected ‘one’ can do it. It could be said that it can be visualise through the Chinese kung fu movies or ‘Harry Pother’, how that knowledge of graphic design are transferred to others, there’s no one ways but many different ways, and it all depend to the ‘Sifu’ or ‘Master’.

I decided to do my PhD because I have found myself wanting for something more in graphic design, a sense of acknowledgement from societies that graphic designers do plays ‘something’ in the culture, in fact in the look and representation of a country. Like in the soccer games or rugby where each one of the player do have the position and know what to do. I think graphic designers have that roles in the society and understand what they need to do. It is not that I feel bored of practising graphic design, but at one point in I was thinking how far could this process go?

Neal questions have motivate me to document our discussion here is ‘How what we do as graphic designers reflects on others?’. Designers think of how to communicate, with different strategies and methods, but do they think of the step they took and what changes or damage they make on the way? Do graphic designer ever think that we might mislead people with signage directions through our design knowledge, with the choice of font we selected and the bright striking colour just because we think that it looks good and have a sense of attraction to it. What recipes graphic designers follow when they designing? Is it their understanding of culture, education, emotions, and reaction towards materials, people and environment that makes them have the trust to make something in order to communicate? What are the ingredients behind this? How do some designers have certain style like identities that make others distinguish them from others? Do graphic designers think about these questions in their creative process of making?

Laurene gave an interesting example when we had a discussion with the Comm.Design Postgraduate group about this. She was talking about her visit to aboriginal’s areas in Victoria and how she found her self fascinated by their day-to-day practice particularly their fishing methods. She was left asking herself how could the European have missed this methods, why it is not been taken into their everyday practices as it is an interesting and effective way to catch a fish.

Is it because that it is not as easy as it looks to describe it or to write it. Some methods or skills are much better learn by practice rather by reading, one could understand the theory but might not be able to do it practically. So, coming back to the European visitors in the olden days, hypothetically, perhaps that someone did write it down step by step, the way to do it, but when it is taken away from the actual environment or situation it might not be as easy as how it was written. I could take this example as how graphic designers create their design, practicing is much easier that articulating the thought of how the theory could be, or how it works, the ‘magical’ part of it. It is much handy to show or demonstrate rather that talking about it. Or for most graphic designers it is much simple to visualise a situation or anything rather than to write or articulating it.

I remembered when I started to work as a Window Display Artist in Park Royal Hotel 10 years ago, all I wanted to do is to practice what I’ve learn and make things. It is funny that I think somehow I belief that I have the kind of ‘power’ to make things look better. I understand that I can ‘communicate’ to ‘others’ through my design creations. In fact when I found out that people react or response to it, it makes my day and makes me belief more and more that I have the ‘power’. To me even though there is no signature in my design work like a practise of an artist, it doesn’t really matter as what is important is, it is successfully communicate to the others. My design will let others know who I am, the style I created and the language I spoken through my design work is enough for others to know who it is from. I’ve created my representations through visual. I exist and I’m part of the societies and contributing in the construction of identity. That is important for me. As what Descartes said ‘I think therefore I am’. Time to think graphic designers…